The Spaces a Modern Kitchen and Bathroom Leave
Mice want warmth, food and a way between the two that keeps them off open floor. Boxed-in pipework provides the way. Under the sink, behind the units and in the corner of a bathroom, boxing forms a vertical shaft around the pipes, open at each end where they pass through floor and ceiling. The hole cut for a pipe is always wider than the pipe, and in a home built quickly to a standard detail it is not always filled afterwards.
The soil stack and the holes around it
The soil stack is the largest pipe in the building and has the largest hole cut for it. Where it is boxed into a corner and drops through the floor of a flat, or runs down through a cupboard in a house, the gap around it can be an open route from one storey to the next. Look on the floor of that cupboard and along the base of the boxing. Where mice nest indoors covers the places worth opening up.
Meter cupboards and service runs
Gas, electricity and water arrive through a wall into a cupboard, and heating pipework and cabling carry on from there. Every one of those entries is a hole, and the runs onward often pass through party walls and floor voids shared with the home next door. In a low-rise block those routes are why something that starts behind one kitchen is heard in another a few weeks later, which can mice travel between flats? explains.
Between one home and the next
Homes on the estate change hands and change tenants, and mice notice. A property standing empty with the heating off is a quiet place to nest; a kitchen being taken out is not, and the animals in it go somewhere close. On a low-rise block the nearest warm kitchen may be through a party wall rather than along the street, so telling your neighbours what you have found is not only good manners: it decides whether the problem ends or circulates.
Where to Look in a Stonebridge Home
- Droppings at the back of the cupboard under the sink, around the trap and the pipe boxing
- Droppings or a stale smell in the meter cupboard, or in a cupboard housing the boiler
- Nibbled corners on packets at the back of a food cupboard — rice, cereal and dry pet food first
- Dark marks and fine gnawing along the edge of a kickboard or around a built-in appliance
- Scratching inside a stud wall, a ceiling or the boxing after dark, always in the same spot
The signs of mice goes through each of these. If the droppings are dark, tapered and clearly larger, or there are burrows out in the garden, rat control in Stonebridge is the booking you want instead.
Worth Doing Before Anyone Arrives
- Move dry food and pet food into tins or hard plastic tubs with a lid that clips down
- Clean under the cooker and along the front edge of the units, where crumbs collect out of sight
- Empty the under-sink cupboard so the pipework and the floor around it can be seen
- Ask next door whether they are finding droppings, and tell your landlord or agent if you rent
- Leave the holes for now: sealing while mice are active can shut them inside a wall or floor
- Keep poison out of voids and boxing, where a dead mouse cannot be reached and the smell lingers
Around the Visit
When you book
When you book mouse control, say whether it is a house or a flat, which floor you are on, which rooms the droppings are in and how long it has been going on. Mention a neighbouring home that is empty or being worked on, and whether anyone else in the block has the same thing.
Getting ready
Clear the food cupboards and the cupboard under the sink, move what you can back from the kickboards, and make sure the meter and boiler cupboards can be opened. If an appliance can be pulled out safely, do it before the visit rather than during it.
Afterwards
You will hear what was found and what to do next. The time it takes depends on the home and on whether mice are active around it, as how long mouse treatment takes explains. Contact us again if droppings return after a quiet spell, or the noise shifts to another part of the home.
Keeping Mice Out of a Newer Property
In a home of this age the openings that count are nearly all internal and nearly all vertical: the top and bottom of pipe boxing, the hole in the floor where a waste drops away, the space behind and beneath the units, the gap under a front door onto a communal stair. Small reachable holes can be closed with rodent proofing in Stonebridge, and how to mouse-proof a property covers the rest. Where one home in a block is treated and the others are not, mice tend to move rather than go, which is most of why mice keep coming back.
For mice across the borough see Mouse Control Brent; neighbouring Wembley looks at the same problem in larger blocks of flats.
